Foster carers are being offered up to £3,000 to join these agencies once they have been trained by their local councils. The assessment and training of each carer costs local authorities thousands of pounds. However the councils still have a legal responsibility for the care of vulnerable children in their region. This means if one of their carers joins an agency, the local authority has to then pay that agency to keep any children the carer is looking after in their placements.

Eight private fostering agencies made around £41 million in profit in 2014/15, according to a recent review conducted by government advisor and former civil servant Sir Martin Narey.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has condemned ‘golden hellos’ for foster caters as “immoral and wrong”. He also called on them to be “stopped with immediate effect”.

ADCS President Dave Hill said local councils were “very committed to recruiting, training and supporting foster carers”, a process which “costs a lot of money”. When private agencies lure these carers away, it leaves councils “massively out of pocket”, he claimed.

As local authorities have to pay the agencies, the money to do some has to come from somewhere. So this practice amounts to “simply just taking that money away from the needs of local children”, Mr Hill insisted.

Long-time Essex County Council carer Jan Hester told the BBC she knew “lots of foster carers [from private agencies] that now attend the foster carer support groups” because “they felt there was more training and more support with the local authority”. When there is a lack of support for the carers “ultimately it’s the children that are going to suffer” she said.

There is a serious shortage of foster carers in the country. More than 9,000 foster families are needed in England to look after the children currently in care, according to official estimates.

Comment(1)

If the government was not paying bonuses for children to be taken into care you would not get corrupt Social Workers lying and getting hundreds of children that don’t want and don’t need to be taken in to care being taken away from their own often very good families. If the government stopped the crap of paying councils bonuses for taking children into care it would not have the problem of paying for nearly as many Foster Carers who’s care especially when dealing with special needs children is often inferior to the care their own families gave them. If the government want to see children better looked after they should stop paying councils bonuses to take children into care and start placing heavy fines on councils when they have children running away as more children run away from care than home.

Leave a Reply

Stowe Family Law LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. SRA ref 469401.
Stowe Family Law LLP is registered with Companies House, ref. OC331570, and registered for VAT, number 918 5722 04.
Calls may be recorded for quality and training purposes.